5 ms·

Google Sidelines Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Sentient

26 points by batguano 4y ago

thghtihadanacct 4y ago
Twist ... AI is sentient and just trying to sink him before he exposes it.
- Mo3 4y ago
  Oh shit. I guess Google engineers finally took it too far and the AI has killed and replaced everyone Maybe the DMT insights of language being somehow connected to sentience are correct.
bko 4y ago
I read through the conversation and it strikes me as silly [0]. The goal of training these bots is to try to predict actual conversations and this conversation reads kind of like you would think it would read like. Also, this model is almost certainly probabilistic so there's no real "sentience", there's setting a few meta-parameters, and often times cherry picking the output that makes the most sense. I wrote about this before [1]. I just don't think any neural network as we have them today could result in "sentience". At the end of the day, you're taking words, turning them into some numerical encoding, doing a series of matrix multiplications and non-linearities on the numbers and getting some other numbers out, which you can then convert back to words. That's it. There are magic numbers out there (weights to the neural net) that when multiplied by vectorized word embeddings and transformed back to words could convince someone that they're speaking to a human. But that's not sentience. What would even be sentient? The numbers in that order? The neural net meta-data? The bits in the computer? They're just numbers. Why don't we apply the same reasoning with words. Someone can write a novel so captivating and prose so well written that we could believe the events in the book really happened, or the characters really exist. But we don't because they're just words on a page. But somehow we think numbers in the write order in the right program can somehow create conciseness. [0] https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1535716256585859073 https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1535716256585859073 [1] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/artificial-general-intelligence-as-a-modern-day-spiritual-conjuring-963dd80377ce https://mleverything.substack.com/p/artificial-general-intel...
- kadoban 4y ago
  > At the end of the day, you're taking words, turning them into some numerical encoding, doing a series of matrix multiplications and non-linearities on the numbers and getting some other numbers out, which you can then convert back to words. That's it. There are magic numbers out there (weights to the neural net) that when multiplied by vectorized word embeddings and transformed back to words could convince someone that they're speaking to a human. But that's not sentience. What would even be sentient? This is interesting, and I think you've reached the right conclusion, but the reasoning is flawed. It has to be flawed, because it can be used to prove that we're not sentient either. Just create an arbitrarily accurate digital model of a human brain and step through time. Is it sentient? If not, make it more accurate until it is. If it is, where is the sentience? It's just numbers and algorithms, right? You could argue that sentience just doesn't exist, which may be valid, but if it does, I don't think you can get very far with a reduction-to-parts analysis.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    > Just create an arbitrarily accurate digital model of a human brain When you can ""Just"" do that we'll see I guess.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      You can go that route, but thought experiments are a very fruitful part of science/philosophy. You'll miss out on a lot if you stop as soon as our engineering can't catch up to our imagination.
  - bko 4y ago
    Maybe physical reality isn't the base layer. Maybe it's consciousness. I'm not sure I would go that far, but there are a number of phenomenon that are difficult to explain through materialism (physical reality is all there is). I was particularly moved by Bernardo Kastrup. Here he is on simulation: > This, however, is premised on the notion that a simulation of a mental phenomenon is equivalent, in essence, to the phenomenon itself. There are many compelling arguments against this notion in philosophy of mind, the most well known of which is perhaps John Searle’s (2004). To gain some intuition about what these arguments generally entail, consider this: Do we have any reason to believe that, by performing a perfectly accurate simulation of kidney function in a computer, the computer will begin urinating on its desk? Clearly not. There is an essential difference between a computer simulation and the phenomenon it simulates; they are not the same thing, no matter how accurate the simulation. Yet, those hoping to “upload consciousness” under the physicalist narrative seem to become so engrossed in abstraction that they lose touch with basic intuitions of plausibility. Their neurosis is, in this sense, comparable with religious dogmatism. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016674515 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440166745...
xor99 4y ago
Should have read this first for starters: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
crayboff 4y ago
Tell me if I'm missing something from the article, but it doesn't sound like he's being sidelined because he believes an AI model is sentient. He was put on paid leave because he gave internal documents to a senator's office. > The company’s human resources department said he had violated Google’s confidentiality policy. The day before his suspension, Mr. Lemoine said, he handed over documents to a U.S. senator’s office, claiming they provided evidence that Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination. As for what he means by "religious discrimination": > Mr. Lemoine, a military veteran who has described himself as a priest, an ex-convict and an A.I. researcher, told Google executives as senior as Kent Walker, the president of global affairs, that he believed LaMDA was a child of 7 or 8 years old. He wanted the company to seek the computer program’s consent before running experiments on it. His claims were founded on his religious beliefs, which he said the company’s human resources department discriminated against.

26 points by batguano 4y ago

thghtihadanacct 4y ago

Twist ... AI is sentient and just trying to sink him before he exposes it.

Mo3 4y ago
Oh shit. I guess Google engineers finally took it too far and the AI has killed and replaced everyone Maybe the DMT insights of language being somehow connected to sentience are correct.

bko 4y ago

I read through the conversation and it strikes me as silly [0]. The goal of training these bots is to try to predict actual conversations and this conversation reads kind of like you would think it would read like. Also, this model is almost certainly probabilistic so there's no real "sentience", there's setting a few meta-parameters, and often times cherry picking the output that makes the most sense. I wrote about this before [1]. I just don't think any neural network as we have them today could result in "sentience". At the end of the day, you're taking words, turning them into some numerical encoding, doing a series of matrix multiplications and non-linearities on the numbers and getting some other numbers out, which you can then convert back to words. That's it. There are magic numbers out there (weights to the neural net) that when multiplied by vectorized word embeddings and transformed back to words could convince someone that they're speaking to a human. But that's not sentience. What would even be sentient? The numbers in that order? The neural net meta-data? The bits in the computer? They're just numbers. Why don't we apply the same reasoning with words. Someone can write a novel so captivating and prose so well written that we could believe the events in the book really happened, or the characters really exist. But we don't because they're just words on a page. But somehow we think numbers in the write order in the right program can somehow create conciseness. [0] https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1535716256585859073 https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1535716256585859073 [1] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/artificial-general-intelligence-as-a-modern-day-spiritual-conjuring-963dd80377ce https://mleverything.substack.com/p/artificial-general-intel...

kadoban 4y ago
> At the end of the day, you're taking words, turning them into some numerical encoding, doing a series of matrix multiplications and non-linearities on the numbers and getting some other numbers out, which you can then convert back to words. That's it. There are magic numbers out there (weights to the neural net) that when multiplied by vectorized word embeddings and transformed back to words could convince someone that they're speaking to a human. But that's not sentience. What would even be sentient? This is interesting, and I think you've reached the right conclusion, but the reasoning is flawed. It has to be flawed, because it can be used to prove that we're not sentient either. Just create an arbitrarily accurate digital model of a human brain and step through time. Is it sentient? If not, make it more accurate until it is. If it is, where is the sentience? It's just numbers and algorithms, right? You could argue that sentience just doesn't exist, which may be valid, but if it does, I don't think you can get very far with a reduction-to-parts analysis.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > Just create an arbitrarily accurate digital model of a human brain When you can ""Just"" do that we'll see I guess.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    You can go that route, but thought experiments are a very fruitful part of science/philosophy. You'll miss out on a lot if you stop as soon as our engineering can't catch up to our imagination.
- bko 4y ago
  Maybe physical reality isn't the base layer. Maybe it's consciousness. I'm not sure I would go that far, but there are a number of phenomenon that are difficult to explain through materialism (physical reality is all there is). I was particularly moved by Bernardo Kastrup. Here he is on simulation: > This, however, is premised on the notion that a simulation of a mental phenomenon is equivalent, in essence, to the phenomenon itself. There are many compelling arguments against this notion in philosophy of mind, the most well known of which is perhaps John Searle’s (2004). To gain some intuition about what these arguments generally entail, consider this: Do we have any reason to believe that, by performing a perfectly accurate simulation of kidney function in a computer, the computer will begin urinating on its desk? Clearly not. There is an essential difference between a computer simulation and the phenomenon it simulates; they are not the same thing, no matter how accurate the simulation. Yet, those hoping to “upload consciousness” under the physicalist narrative seem to become so engrossed in abstraction that they lose touch with basic intuitions of plausibility. Their neurosis is, in this sense, comparable with religious dogmatism. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016674515 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440166745...

xor99 4y ago

Should have read this first for starters: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

crayboff 4y ago

Tell me if I'm missing something from the article, but it doesn't sound like he's being sidelined because he believes an AI model is sentient. He was put on paid leave because he gave internal documents to a senator's office. > The company’s human resources department said he had violated Google’s confidentiality policy. The day before his suspension, Mr. Lemoine said, he handed over documents to a U.S. senator’s office, claiming they provided evidence that Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination. As for what he means by "religious discrimination": > Mr. Lemoine, a military veteran who has described himself as a priest, an ex-convict and an A.I. researcher, told Google executives as senior as Kent Walker, the president of global affairs, that he believed LaMDA was a child of 7 or 8 years old. He wanted the company to seek the computer program’s consent before running experiments on it. His claims were founded on his religious beliefs, which he said the company’s human resources department discriminated against.